Europe

I wrote about Crete twice last month ("Crete: Pleistocene port of call?", "More tools from Crete"). Now John Noble Wilford writes about Strasser and Panagopoulou's work: "On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient Mariners". The article reviews the finds, and then gives space to a bunch of speculations.

The exposed uplifted layers represent the sequence of geologic periods that have been well studied and dated, in some cases correlated to established dates of glacial and interglacial periods of the most recent ice age. In addition, the team analyzed the layer bearing the tools and determined that the soil had been on the surface 130,000 to 190,000 years ago.

Dr. Runnels said he considered this a minimum age for the tools themselves. They include not only quartz hand axes, but also cleavers and scrapers, all of which are in the Acheulean style. The tools could have been made millenniums before they became, as it were, frozen in time in the Cretan cliffs, the archaeologists said.

Dr. Runnels suggested that the tools could be at least twice as old as the geologic layers. Dr. Strasser said they could be as much as 700,000 years old. Further explorations are planned this summer.

Ancient artifacts may be exposed to the elements once again and then re-incorporated into more recent sedimentary contexts, a process called "reworking". It happens. But it's a stretch, unless there is some independent evidence that the tools and surrounding rocks bear signs of battering from water transport or other contextual evidence of reworking.

Going out and saying that the tools could be "as much as 700,000 years old" is just overreaching -- it's like they're trying to say this is comparable to the "earliest" evidence of watercraft. And you really have to stretch the dates to get there: Flores was apparently inhabited by 800,000 years ago.

At the end:

But archaeologists and experts on early nautical history said the discovery appeared to show that these surprisingly ancient mariners had craft sturdier and more reliable than rafts. They also must have had the cognitive ability to conceive and carry out repeated water crossing over great distances in order to establish sustainable populations producing an abundance of stone artifacts.

Maybe. Maybe not. What evidence is there that the crossings were "repeated"? Imagine what would serve...finding Crete-derived rocks in a mainland site would do it, or vice-versa. Any evidence of transport. I don't imagine we'll find any earlier human-introduced fauna, and a human-induced extinction might result from a single invasion, not a "sustained" record of multiple crossings.

I pointed to one such faunal turnover in my last Crete post, which would point to a human invasion in the mid-Middle Pleistocene. Parallel technical change with Greece or North Africa after this time would show multiple contacts -- but such evidence would suppose a long archaeological record that we don't yet have.

I just don't think it helps to speculate so freely. Sure, we might find things that surprise us. But the actual facts are surprising enough to justify funding much more work.

After last weekend's post about Thomas Strasser's work on Crete ("Crete: Pleistocene port of call?"), I've heard from a reader who forwarded some earlier reports about Lower or Middle Paleolithic artifacts on Crete and the nearby island of Gavdos. These are in the "Project Gallery" area of Antiquity -- papers in ths section are short descriptions of ongoing field projects and are freely accessible online.

Peder Mortensen (2008) reports on a surface find of artifacts near Loutró, on the south coast of Crete. There's essentially no possibility of dating except on the basis of typology, which is pretty weak. But the article does give a good discussion of why the artifacts are genuine and not natural geofacts. Also, a short review:

During the last 50 years a number of Middle Palaeolithic sites have been found and excavated on the Greek mainland, but Lower Palaeolithic finds are still sparsely represented (Bailey et al. 1999). From the Greek islands a chopping tool made of a strongly patinated beige flint, possibly associated with a palaeomagnetic date of 750 ka was reported from Corfu by G. Kourtessi-Philippakis (1999: 283-4, Figure 25.2), and from Nea Skala on Cephalonia a collection of flakes and blades found together with flint pebbles were thought to be of a Lower Palaeolithic date (Cubuk 1976: 175 ff.). Previously, several Middle Palaeolithic finds were reported from the islands of Corfu, Cephalonia and Zakyntos (see Darlas 1994: 308-14; Kourtessi-Philippakis 1999: 283 ff.), and recent research on Cephalonia has revealed several Palaeolithic surface finds, including two sites with flakes, choppers, chopping tools, and a single handaxe (Foss 2002/I: 61ff. & plates. AII: 13-16 & AIII: 1-16). With reference to finds from Epirus, and in particular to the inventory of the open-air site at Kokkinopilos, a Middle Palaeolithic date is suggested by Foss for the Palaeolithic industries found on Cephalonia, including the lithics found by Cubuk at Nea Skala (Foss 2002/II: 94-102).

Meanwhile, Katerina Kopaka and Christos Matzanas (2009) discuss the archaeology of the island of Gavdos, off the south coast of Crete. The later record is interesting, but the Lower and Middle Paleolithic occurrences are mainly limited to the site of Ayios Pavlos. These are classified typologically, which is not especially convincing for the few supposed Lower Paleolithic artifacts. Concerning the early Middle Paleolithic, they write:

Material from Ayios Pavlos Group 3 is also found at Vatsiana and Kavos, and includes scrapers, denticulates, Levallois flakes (Figure 5b) and blades or blade-like débitage (cf. Darlas 1994a: 312, 314) of an Early Mousterian (proto-Mousterian) industry compared to the typical Greek Mousterian. These artefacts have a yellowish-white patina. They can be dated to c. 120-75 kyr, i.e. Marine Isotope Stage [MIS] 5a-d, usually attributed to Würm I (Gamble 1986: 76, 86). Although the preferred raw material is (and was to remain) the local black flint, some pieces are made of flints from as yet unidentified sources - possibly from Crete, obtained during cold phases of the Würm whencommunication with neighbouring coasts would have been less treacherous.

These are enough to say that there are several sites with archaeology consistent with Neandertal-era or earlier occupation on Crete. Julien Riel-Salvatore discusses the issue in some more detail ("Lower-Middle Paleolithic island living?"). If it's true, an early occupation of Crete would require watercraft. People seem to keep talking about Africans coming north in boats more than 120,000 years ago, but I see no reason to assume this. I suppose they might have washed out of the Nile delta on a log raft. But I think the faunal turnover before 300,000 years ago would be the logical time to infer presence of a new carnivorous species, and it's probably simpler to derive the boat-builders from Europe, particularly given the potential of small island stepping stones in the Aegean.

All speculation until we see some more solid archaeological context; something better than typology.

References:

Kopaka K, Matzanas C. 2009. Palaeolithic industries from the island of Gavdos, near neighbor to Crete in Greece. Antiquity 83: Online.

Mortensen P. 2008. Lower to Middle Paleolithic artefacts from Loutró on the south coast of Crete. Antiquity 82: Online.

It's hard to imagine a nicer place for them to have lived 1.57 million years ago. The site is near the village of Lézignan-le-Cèbe, in the lower Hérault valley -- roughly between Montpellier and Béziers, France. The paper describing the site, by Jean-Yves Crochet and colleagues, is brief, with a faunal list, a description of the geology, and a short summary of the artifactual record.

The geology seems very secure. The archaeological remains are in a layer capped by a basalt flow, with radiometric dates around 1.56 million years ago. The fauna are consistent with this early date. So it's the real deal.

The paper has an abridged English translation along with the French text, and I'll just paste what they write about the artifacts:

The lithic assemblage includes 20 artefacts of pebble-culture type. The supports and striking platforms are quartzitic pebbles, large basaltic flakes and fragments, and smaller flint pebbles. All flakes are exclusively produced by direct percussion, employing a hard stone hammer. Unilateral alterations can be observed on the periphery of certain flakes. The pebbles are developed in chopping-tools, and their edges often show traces of repetitive impacts. The lithic assemblage found at the locus 2 shows similar primary technical features to those from the other Early Pleistocene European sites [10,11,17,20,30,34] (Crochet et al. 2009:727).

The French text contains some additional comparisons of the lithic artifacts with those from other French sites of Villafranchian faunal age. The site may not be unique except in its stratigraphy which allows very secure dating.

UPDATE (2009-12-18): A reader tells me that the paper is available from the French Academy website for those who don't have institutional access to ScienceDirect.

I have heard from some people who are skeptical about the artifacts. I venture no opinion -- I'd like to see the results of their further investigation of taphonomy, in particular whether the "intentionally broken" animal bones were really human-modified. That should be testable, and of course a couple of cutmarks would go a long way.

References:

Crochet J-Y, Welcomme J-L, Ivorra J, Ruffet G, Boulbes N, Capdevila R, Claude J, Firmat C, Métais G, Michaux J, Pickford M. 2009. Une nouvelle faune de vertébrés continentaux, associée à des artifacts dans le Pléistocène inférieur de l'Hérault (Sud de la France), ver 1,57 Ma. C R Palevol 8:725-736. doi:10.1016/j.crpv.2009.06.004